A Moment in Time (45 page)

Running up to the terrace, he saw someone
standing in front of the open French doors. He grinned.
A piece
of cake
, he thought.
First her, then him
.

As he fired he heard the gunshots. His Smith
& Wesson Mark 22 had a silencer.
What the hell?
He
didn't know, but he saw the body drop. Got the vet. Now I've got to
get him. He stepped forward to look for Conrad, but didn't see him.
Where is he?
Then he saw Wyn's body sprawled on the floor.
What's going on?
But he didn't have time to figure it out.
Those gunshots—got to get out of here
.

Valerie stood with the heavily ornamented
pistol in her hand, quivering from head to toe. The shots she'd
fired had made her ears ring. Even from this distance, she could
see that Wyn was dead. His body lay inert, sprawled on the floor in
front of the big walnut cabinet that housed the CD player. His eyes
were wide open, and there was no sign of life in him.

She walked over to the other body. The person
she was certain she'd murdered. She looked down.

My God. Daphne Collins.

Why?
she asked herself, staring at the
body.
We were friends, weren't we?

She looked around then, almost in an
otherworldly daze.

Blood.

It was everywhere.

Valerie stood over the body—Daphne's body,
she reminded herself—looking down at it with utter dispassion.
Daphne's eyes, usually so bright with curiosity, were now
stone-cold. Dead, they looked. Her lips, normally ready with a
smile, were drawn into a thin, colorless, and unfamiliar line. Her
blond hair hung about her face in Medusa-like snakes, the tendrils
matted and dirty.

After an eternal minute, Valerie stepped
closer, then knelt beside the body, noticing the blood that stained
the dark needlepoint rug. A Jell-O-like pool of it had fanned out
in a small kidney shape on the oak floor where the head rested. Its
taint suddenly assailed her nostrils with its unmistakable metallic
odor. But she was accustomed to it and didn't recoil or tremble or
feel the urge to faint or vomit. Her composure remained intact.

Reaching out a hand, she took one of Daphne's
blood-smeared hands in her own. She held it there for two full
minutes, feeling for a pulse. She didn't detect one, but then she
hadn't expected to. She'd seen death countless times in her thirty
years and knew that what she was doing was unnecessary. But she
kept feeling for a pulse, nonetheless, concentrating all of her
efforts on the procedure, as if by feeling hard enough she could
produce the heartbeat she was certain she wouldn't hear. After a
few more moments she gently replaced the hand on the rug and got to
her feet.

There was no doubt that Daphne was dead.

Dead
, she thought without emotion. She
had gone completely numb and felt like a zombie operating on remote
control. The stone-cold expression on her face didn't change with
this awful knowledge. There was no quiver of fear or horror or
sadness about her lips. No tears of remorse or grief sprang to her
eyes. Anybody happening upon the macabre tableau would think her an
ice maiden, seeing her features thus composed.

She walked over to the
bureau plat
and
reached down and picked up the receiver, then dialed the number
with a steady hand. When a voice answered at the other end, she
replied in a cool, even voice.

"This is Dr. Valerie Rochelle," she said. "I
just murdered someone."

Chapter Thirty-One

Santo ran quickly to his cottage and hurried
in.

Arielle jumped up from the couch where she
was sitting, her eyes huge with fright.

"What
happened?"
' she gasped. "I heard
shots!"

"I'm not really sure," Santo replied.
"Something went wrong."

"Oh,
Jesus!
" Arielle exclaimed.
"Hadn't we better get out of here?"

"We're going to haul ass," Santo said. "We've
got to beat the cops." He withdrew the Hush Puppy from his
waistband and studied it closely.

"What about the Reinhardts?" she asked.

"Their lights are still out," Santo said. "I
don't think they heard anything." He looked back down at the gun,
then shoved it back in his waistband. "There's nothing wrong with
this silencer as far as I can tell," he said, still baffled by the
turn of events.

"If the silencer works," Arielle asked, "then
who fired the shots?"

"I don't know," Santo said. "I didn't see
anything much except her taking a hit." He wasn't going to tell
Arielle that he'd seen Wyn sprawled on the floor in a pool of
blood, but that he hadn't shot him. He'd explain that later.

"It had to be the silencer—" Arielle
began.

"Come on," he said. "We're haven't got time
to stand around here talking. We're getting out of here. You were
supposed to have the car ready."

Arielle grabbed her flask off the coffee
table, then rushed into the kitchen and looked at the liquor
bottles on the counter, finally selecting a bottle of Stoli.

"Hurry," Santo growled. He was already past
her, through the laundry room, and going into the garage.

Arielle rushed after him, vodka bottle in
hand.

Santo fired up the big Range Rover, then
opened the garage door using the remote. He backed out into the
drive, turned onto the road that led to the stables and on out to
the gates.

We're out of here,
he thought,
on
our way to freedom
.

Shit! The video cameras. Almost forgot
them. I'll just dismount them when we get to the gate, and take
them with us. Then show up tomorrow morning, like I
planned
.

He gave the Range Rover gas, anxious to get
to the gates and out of this place.

Valerie stood looking over toward Wyn's body.
Her icy facade, a defensive response to the horrible reality she'd
witnessed and been a part of, began to crack. She'd been on
automatic pilot, hardly aware of what she'd been doing. Fixated on
Daphne, Wyn's death had barely registered.

Now she began to shake uncontrollably, and
bile rose up in her throat. She thought she was going to throw up
and started for the bathroom. She stopped suddenly near the
bookcases when she heard a loud moan.
From over near the CD
player
, she thought
, I'm sure of it
. A chill went up her
spine, but she turned around and looked back into the big room.

Her heart began to race. She rushed to the
spot where she had seen Wyn's body and stopped in her tracks. For a
moment she thought she would faint. His body wasn't there. She saw
the blood on the rug leading toward his desk, and then she saw him,
crawling with all his might toward the telephone.

"Wyn!" she cried, running to him. She reached
him and got down onto her knees, tears already streaming from her
eyes, flowing down her cheeks in rivulets. Her body shook with both
relief and joy.

He moaned again, louder this time, and moved
his head, trying to look up at her. "Hey, Doc," he breathed. "Got
shot."

"I know you did," she cried, still shaking
all over. "I know you did."

"Doc," he said, "open . . . open that
drawer." With a crooked finger, he indicated a small drawer in the
bureau plat
.

Valerie opened it immediately. "What, Wyn?"
she asked. "What is it?"

"See . . . see that row of buttons?"

"Yes," she said, "I see it."

"Push the one marked 'Front Gates,' " he
said. "Push it hard."

Valerie did as she was told, depressing the
button with all her might, then she turned back to him.

He started to say something else but only a
groan escaped his lips.

"Shhh," she said. "I've already called the
police. They should be here any minute with an ambulance. I thought
you were dead, Wyn. You looked dead, and there was so much
blood."

His eyes were still open, and there was a
hint of a grin on his lips. "It's . . . it's nothing, Doc,"

Valerie didn't know whether to believe him or
not, but she could plainly see the track of the bullet along the
side of his head. It looked like a scalp wound, only she didn't
want to take any chances.

"Wyn," she said, "lie perfectly still." Maybe
she could do something for him. Maybe she could stop the flow of
blood, for he was still bleeding. It was all over the rug. "Just
stay where you are. I'll be right back."

"Don't leave me, Doc," he said.

"I'll be right back," she said. "I'm just
getting some scissors off your desk."

Her eyes scanned the top of the desk until
she saw scissors in a malachite cup. Grabbing them, she ran back
over to him and started cutting the gauzy hem of her djellaba
away.

"The dogs," he muttered.

"They must've been shot with tranquilizer
darts," she said. "I'll take the darts out, but they won't come
around for a while yet. They should be just fine."

"Good," he gasped.

The Range Rover pulled to a stop at the front
gates, and Santo pushed on the remote to open them. When they
didn't at first open, he pushed on the remote again. Still they
didn't move.

What now?
he wondered.

He opened the car door and jumped out,
holding the remote pointed directly at the gates. Still they didn't
budge.
What's going on?

He ran toward the gates, constantly pressing
the remote to no avail. When he reached them, he grabbed hold of
them, one iron bar in each of his hands, pulling with all his
might. Nothing. They didn't budge an inch. "Jesus!" he swore
aloud.

"What's the matter?" Arielle cried from the
car.

"The remote won't open the gates," Santo
called back to her.

"What do you mean it won't open them?" she
cried.

"Just what I said, you stupid bitch," Santo
yelled.

He ran back to the Range Rover and got in the
driver's seat. "Listen," he said, "hold on tight. We're going to
have to ram the car through the gates. I don't know any other way
to open them."

Santo backed up the Range Rover, aimed
directly toward the point at which the two gates connected, then
stomped on the gas. The car launched into the gates at breakneck
speed, and there was an earsplitting grind of metal against metal
that practically drowned out Arielle's scream.

The gates didn't give.

"Shut the fuck up, Arielle," Santo roared. He
backed the car up again, farther back up the lane this time, then
stomped on the gas again.

The big car roared forward and hit the gates
at about thirty miles an hour. The shattering sound of the impact
was even louder than before.

Santo, his seat belt firmly secured, was
fine, but Arielle was thrown first backward, then forward, and
almost went into the windshield. Santo started to back up a third
time. At that moment, he heard the screeching sirens of police cars
and ambulances, and saw their flashing red and blue lights as they
raced down the road. From overhead, the sound of a helicopter's
churning rotors was deafening, and its powerful search floodlights
swept the entire scene, rendering the night surreal. The police
cars and ambulances appeared on the opposite side of the gates,
which suddenly began to part.

Santo flung the car door open and started to
run, but before he got twenty feet he was tackled by two policemen
who manhandled his wrists behind his back and slapped cuffs on
him.

Two other policemen rushed to Arielle's side
of the Range Rover and jerked open the door. She began screaming
and crying all at once, blindly kicking and flinging her arms at
them, but she was pulled out of the car and cuffed before she could
inflict any bodily harm.

"You're both coming into the station," a big
officer grunted as he strolled up, taking in the scene. "Get 'em
out of here."

The library had become crowded with policemen
and EMS personnel. Wyn was on a stretcher now, and they were about
to carry him out to the ambulance.

"Thank God," Valerie said. She turned to the
policeman standing next to her. Cawley, his name tag said.

"I've got to go with him, Officer Cawley,"
she said frantically. "I've got to."

"You placed the call, right?" he said.

"Yes," she replied.

The officer retrieved the Purdy pistol that
Valerie had used to shoot Daphne. "Is this it?" he asked, showing
her the weapon.

Wyn lifted his head from the stretcher.

"You couldn't have killed her with that,
Val," Wyn said. "It's loaded with blanks. Nearly all of them are."
He looked toward Cawley and winced in pain. "Check it out,
officer," he said. "You'll find blanks in that gun and nearly all
the others."

Cawley looked down at it, then back up at
her. "Let her go to the hospital," he said.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Wyn and Valerie dismounted and led their
horses into the stable yard, where Helmut Reinhardt took the reins
from them. He would put the horses in their stalls. Then, hand in
hand, they started up the stone path that led to the house. Winter
was around the corner, and it was already cold and gray. They could
see smoke rising skyward from the library's great chimney.

Their faces and ears were red from the cold
wind, but they were oblivious to any discomfort. Under their riding
jackets, they both wore heavy sweaters, and in any case, they were
too happy to allow the weather to interfere with their time
together.

When they reached the library, they greeted
the Irish wolfhounds and Elvis, who had become a steadfast friend
and member of the pack within two days. They shrugged out of their
jackets and took off their gloves, but left their boots on for the
time being. They would wait until they had warmed up to change into
something more comfortable.